How high fixed costs and long payback periods encourage scale, inhibit value capture, and make it difficult to bring sustainable alternatives to market.
This is great stuff. So many new "chemistries" have gone through corn to ethanol and basically try to smash that into the existing big chemical process.
Thanks so much! Happens all the time. Even when they evade ethanol (such as succinic acid via BioAmber) they have faced similar fates—the long term economics have to add up when your business prop is long term.
Imo the dream chemical co of the future will have most advantaged and sustainable feedstocks/pathways and ability to innovate with its customers. Sustainability is now the key for upstream chems. Old ways of production will slowly disappear. But downstreams will need to keep innovating on performance. Society will demand it.
This is great stuff. So many new "chemistries" have gone through corn to ethanol and basically try to smash that into the existing big chemical process.
Thanks so much! Happens all the time. Even when they evade ethanol (such as succinic acid via BioAmber) they have faced similar fates—the long term economics have to add up when your business prop is long term.
Imo the dream chemical co of the future will have most advantaged and sustainable feedstocks/pathways and ability to innovate with its customers. Sustainability is now the key for upstream chems. Old ways of production will slowly disappear. But downstreams will need to keep innovating on performance. Society will demand it.
What margins do you think will get VCs excited to invest in chemical startups